Hall used girls as sexual plaything, court told

Stuart Hall claims the sex was consensual and not rape. Picture: PA

KIM PILLING AND PAT HURST

00:19Thursday 08 May 2014

Paedophile “predator” Stuart Hall used two girls as his personal sexual “plaything” and “toy” while raping them in his BBC dressing room, a court heard.

Hall, now aged 84, made them “subservient and wholly submissive to his sexual demands,” routinely plying one girl, 14, with Bacardi and Coke and pouring champagne over the other youngster’s naked body, as he sexually abused them.

Both girls and their families were known to the defendant, who all trusted the popular BBC TV celebrity, Preston Crown Court heard.

But Hall, currently jailed after admitting sexual offences against 13 other girls, abused their trust by repeatedly raping and sexually assaulting his victims, telling both it was their “secret”, the court heard.

But his lawyer Crispin Aylett QC, told the jury while Hall is a convicted paedophile he is not a rapist – and the defendant claims sex was consensual.

The former It’s a Knockout presenter has pleaded not guilty to all 20 allegations of rape and indecent assault he faces, between 1976 and 1981.

But Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, told the jury: “These were young impressionable teenagers being groomed by a sexual predator into satisfying his sexual requirements.”

The first alleged rape, involving the complainant known only as girl A, took place in his dressing room at the BBC studios in Manchester, some time between January 1976 and April 1977. She was aged 14 at the time and interested in a career in films and TV when she left school, jurors were told.

She was “quite excited” after a “little adventure” to Manchester where Hall made a fuss of her, giving her a tour of the studios at Oxford Road before inviting her to his dressing room.

There he plied her with Bacardi and Coke and she ended up “paralytic”, she told the jury.

Hall became “friendlier and friendlier” and “one thing led to another”, she said. The witness said she only had a “hazy” memory but added: “I remember him being on top of me, I remember his tongue being everywhere. I just went along with it.”

After raping her Hall told her it was “our secret”, jurors heard. Later she began studying at night school in Manchester one evening a week and would routinely go to the BBC studios afterwards to see Hall.

On each occasion after Hall had finished in the studios they would go to the bar for a drink before going back to his dressing room for more alcohol when she would be sexually abused again on a double bed in a next door bedroom.

Sometimes afterwards he would give her £20 saying “treat yourself” and he would drop her off at home in his gold-coloured Rolls Royce. Mr Wright said: “This was a grown man exerting his influence and control over an impressionable and vulnerable young girl, intoxicated by his status and by drink.”

The second alleged victim, girl B, was first abused when she was aged 12, and it continued until she was aged 15. The first incident happened while the girl was cleaning stables and Hall arrived unannounced before raping her against a wall.

On another occasion he indecently assaulted the girl as she lay drunk on her bed.

As the girl grew up, she too showed an interest in a TV career and she would go to the BBC studios in Manchester, where Hall would rape her in his dressing room.

Mr Wright said she was reduced to a “compliant and submissive state”. “His sole concern was self-gratification. She was, we say, his ‘toy’, to be used and abused as he saw fit.

“On occasions he would pour champagne on to her naked body and flatter her. He treated her as his plaything.”

Both women came forward after Hall was jailed last year after he pleaded guilty to 14 offences of indecent assault against 13 girls, aged nine to 17, at the same court and was jailed for 15 months.

The sentence was subsequently increased to 30 months at the Court of Appeal.

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